A few thoughts on our return to the frenzy
This other morning, as I was hurrying my children out the door, I opened the refrigerator and a half closed jar of maraschino cherries came tumbling out, hitting a shelf on its descent and spewing artificial red syrup across the shelves of food in splatters. It looked like a murder.
This is the kind of mess that is impossible to clean up. I’ll find remnants of this mini disaster for years to come. On some seldom used jar of hot sauce. In the way way back of the cheese drawer.
And it is the type of incident that tends to unravel the unwieldy life we live. I like the chaos, generally speaking. We wouldn’t have had three kids if we didn’t. But the truth is that our schedule lately, and perhaps especially for me, feels mildly untenable. Like, I’m not getting into bed with a smile and a laugh, saying, “THAT was a crazy day,” Hallmark movie-style.
What is happening is that I am falling into bed. I avoid thinking about the morning to come because a) it stresses me out and b) I am incapable of making decisions after 8 p.m. And by not planning it, I perpetuate the stress.
I used to long for the mornings! Me and J, coffee in bed! Lingering too long but it was worth it, because that’s when we anchored ourselves before the insanity began. The nice kind of insanity, the kind we expected. And the good news here is that this, what I’m writing about, feels temporary to me. I expect we’ll be back to that kind of coffee in bed soon, J, we better be!
Do you remember when the pandemic hit, and in those first few weeks and months we were all freaking out about things that were absolutely not important, like keeping our kids on a schedule? Around that time there was an essay circulating. It was about not returning to the frenzy after the shutdown was over. That essay went viral in my social circles, and that’s a privileged thing, you know? That we had the time and energy to get all amped up about not going back to our “crazy lives” after this mysterious virus taught us a few lessons. But still, that essay (which I have tried and failed to find online) felt meaningful. I’m oversimplifying here - omitting a lot of important facts - but the shutdown provided a stillness that, it seems, a lot of us had been longing for.
Now, four years post pandemic, our family has resolutely not heeded that advice. We have returned to the frenzy! And yet, beyond the way it makes me feel on a day to day basis, I don’t resent it. I can’t really comprehend a way out, but I also, in a complicated twist, don’t want out! I am - even as I embark on this tirade of venting! - deeply happy. I adore this era of parenting. I just don’t want my days - not every day, but some - to feel like an unbroken string of make-believe emergencies.
It’s hard to pinpoint where the frenzy originates, because our life feels normal to me, if on the far side of “busy.” Three kids is more than average. Our children’s seasonal activities, maybe they’re on the far side of busy, too, but not by much, and they’re dearly important to us. I should note that taking my children to those activities is one of my favorite parts of the day; watching them engage in what moves them. Sitting in the hallway outside piano class is, and forever will be, one of my favorite pastimes.
J and I work. J’s work in particular is very demanding, and I try to maintain time to write for the health of my soul which feels, at times, self-indulgent, even though fostering that kind of creativity is the number one thing I encourage in other people.
There are also obvious factors that I remind myself of when I wonder about the: why. Our children go to three different schools (elementary, middle, high) with three different schedules. And I have learned all too well that when your children are roughly these ages (9, 12, 15) you are in the driving your kids around stage of parenting! The point is, it is soothing to identify the practical factors. Strangely, reminding myself that this is a lot to keep up with helps me calm down about it all. Reminds me that it’s not a puzzle I haven’t tried hard enough to solve - it’s just a really hard puzzle!
During the day, I receive what I assume you all receive: a somewhat endless stream of communications related to work and home and family, etcetera, and I struggle to figure out how best to process them, to remember to respond (and yes, I receive many more than my husband). I know there is a better way than what I’m doing, which is sometimes to react with the paralysis that comes with overwhelm. At the same time, I am beyond grateful for their existence. Grateful for my work. And I wear the comfort of the friendship and communication of my friends, my kids’ friends, and our community like a blanket.
My phone is a superb tool. And also it is a weapon sent to destroy me through mini attacks of the scheduling variety. I need to write an event down within three seconds of learning about it or else it disappears into the ether, never to return, and god forbid it’s a non-event, like an afternoon two weeks in the future when soccer practice is cancelled. How do you remind yourself of something that isn’t happening?
There is a very pretty pond across the street from our house, noisy with bullfrogs in the spring, and in recent months I have thought very seriously, exactly one time, about throwing my phone in, and quite a few fimes, less seriously, about doing so.
I could write many paragraphs more about my inability to address the modern digital world, my woebegone tech attempts, but I will say just one last thing, which I think encapsulates it: I have a Yahoo email address that I have used as a throwaway account, which right now has 700-plus unread messages. Somewhere deep in that mix of marketing messages from every sector of the American economy is likely one bill I very badly need to pay and two or three urgent messages requesting my children’s medical records. I sign in to address these matters, I see that I’ve received 17 new messages from Nancy Pelosi, about a can’t-miss Solo Stove sale and - why? - jokes from “Good, Clean Humor” and I sigh. I sign back out, bill unpaid, medical records unsent.
So, there is all of that. But more than anything, I can’t stop thinking about the post-pandemic return to whatever. No matter where or if you work or have kids. Do you feel this way? Like over the course over four years we’ve been truly rattled, inspired to live a different life, given no time to debrief, and - ok! We are BACK.
Yet I am so happy to be back. I’m in a weird place here, making a weird, and likely very frustrating argument, because I, perhaps more than anyone else in my family, couldn’t wait to get back to the crowded restaurants and hangs in friends’ backyards. To watch the kids get their brown belts in Taekwondo, and have long lunches with coworkers. It’s me, hi.
I worry about saying all this out loud. I worry that it will sound like I’m complaining, which, good grief, I am. And I worry that people will tell me that “it is so hard,” and that we are all doing “the best we can.” The reason those things make me uncomfortable is that it doesn’t feel like my life warrants any of those statements. My life is easy. My days are complicated in, but my life? My life is unquestionably good.
I am, maybe we all are, both things; it can be very good and not exactly how we want it, but the point is, I think it could be, at least most of the time, better than the bad kind of crazy. At this point in my life, I’ve learned how to properly contextualize my situation. I know it won’t last forever. That one day I will miss it. I will find the remnants of a fallen jar of maraschino cherry syrup in the far back corner of the fridge. My children, maybe they’ll be off at college, and I’ll long for those busy mornings! (although, man, I might not! Let’s leave room for that reality, too).
But then I think: that’s right, it won’t last forever. This age, this stage. Isn’t that more reason to make it great, isn’t that the ultimate reason to do more than to simply survive it? I am both frustrated at the incessant onslaught and better than I’ve even been at recognizing the beauty of it all every single day.
What I know is that I don’t want to feel completely floored by things like Gabe’s plan for a “bean night.” Don’t even get me started on his various schemes, but Gabe, who enjoys cooking, decided that he wanted to make dinner for our family, with a menu, and options - the works! But his plan fell on a half day at school, when I also had to unexpectedly pick up Nora downtown, and I was working. And so I almost wrote J a fed up text that said something along the lines of, “I can’t get anything done on this disruptive day, and now I have to go buy some beans.”
I feel like I could explain further but perhaps I don’t need to. You get it! I do not want to be this person, dying the death of a million tiny stresses. I do not want to be this person, rushing my minivan around town, and there is some very noisy bottle rattling around in the backseat, for the love of christ, so I can get home quick to answer an email. Is this rush worth the gain? What’s the gain?
And when I find myself thinking that it doesn’t matter, that everyone is dealing with the same, that it won’t be like this forever, that I am just one person and it’s fine, I pause, I interject: but it does matter, it matters so much.
For the past few Februarys I’ve been doing a month-long meditation challenge by Sharon Salzberg, who I like very much. The goal is to do one of her guided meditations daily, and I haven’t ever succeeded at that, but trying feels great.
In one of her meditations she says something that I think about all the time. It is about how it is normal - totally expected - to get distracted when you are trying to meditate. Sharon says that realizing you’ve been distracted and coming back to yourself is the most important moment: “That’s the practice.” I hope this reach of a reference makes sense, but, anyway, that’s kind of the way I feel right now.
I’ve known them for some time, but am now pushing the proven tools. Planning ahead, more blocking of dedicated time to dedicated things, more pauses to fully assess the decisions. The answers are sometimes so beautifully boring. The “Do Not Disturb” feature on my iPhone. A Sunday family planning session for the week ahead. Only looking at personal emails on Friday, even if you have 700. What else? How do you do it, out there?
I know that these measures won’t prevent the unknowns, which are plentiful! This is just how life is, and I am alright with, and even enjoy, the uncertainty. And I know that some answers, some questions, may be bigger than simple tools and hacks, which is another conversation.
What I wanted to state out loud - and funny enough, so very often true, is that now that I’ve shared it, I feel better - is that I am trying, and will try, harder to avoid the avoidable frenzy.
In the afternoons I pick Aidy up from the local elementary school. I often stand at the metal fence while she plays with friends on the playground before we walk home. I was doing this the other day. Watching kids draw in the dirt, causing dust billows, and cartwheeling across the grass.
I stood there all jangly with the many to-dos left undone and so I made myself stand there longer. I said: are you breathing? Ok, then. Breathe deeper.